Privacy Policy

Prime Insurance is committed to maintaining the accuracy, confidentiality, and security of your personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”). As part of this commitment, our privacy policy governs our actions regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information.

Our privacy policy is based on the Canadian Standards Association’s Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), and Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). As a licensed insurance brokerage in British Columbia, Prime Insurance also complies with the privacy and confidentiality requirements of the Insurance Council of British Columbia and the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC).

Prime Insurance is a family-owned brokerage in Fleetwood, Surrey, serving clients in English, Punjabi, and Hindi since 1994. We only collect Personal Information for legitimate business purposes and we will not sell, trade, or rent any personally identifiable information collected from our clients, our website, or any other channel.

1. Accountability

Prime Insurance is responsible for maintaining and protecting the Personal Information under our control. We have designated a Privacy Officer who is responsible for compliance with our privacy policy and with applicable privacy legislation.

2. Identifying Purposes

We collect, use, and disclose Personal Information for the following purposes:

• To provide you with the insurance products and services you have requested, including ICBC Autoplan, home, condo, tenant, landlord, business, commercial, fleet, trucking, life, and travel insurance.
• To obtain quotes from insurers and to place, renew, amend, or cancel your policies on your behalf.
• To communicate with you regarding quote requests, policies, renewals, payments, and claims, including by telephone, email, and text message (SMS).
• To respond to inquiries submitted through our website at primeinsurance.ca, including web form submissions, callback requests, online quote requests, claim submissions, and certificate-of-insurance requests.
• To administer claims, including communication with claims adjusters and with the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) where applicable.
• To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations as a licensed insurance brokerage, including recordkeeping requirements of the Insurance Council of BC.
• To offer you additional products and services we believe may be relevant to your needs, where you have consented to receive such communications under CASL and PIPEDA.

Our collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information is based on your consent, our legal and regulatory obligations, and legitimate business purposes related to providing insurance services.

The purposes for which we collect Personal Information will be identified before or at the time we collect the information. In certain circumstances, the purposes are clear from the context and consent may be implied — for example, when your name, address, driver’s licence details, vehicle information, and payment information are provided as part of an insurance transaction.

3. Consent

Knowledge and consent are required for the collection, use, or disclosure of Personal Information, except where required or permitted by law.

Providing us with your Personal Information is always your choice. However, your decision not to provide certain information may limit our ability to obtain quotes, issue policies, or process claims on your behalf.

We will not require you to consent to the collection, use, or disclosure of information as a condition of supplying a product or service, except as required to supply that product or service.

Service vs. marketing communications. Service (transactional) messages — about your quote, policy, renewal, payment, or claim — are part of providing the service you have requested and do not require separate marketing consent. We will only send you marketing or promotional emails or text messages where you have given the separate consent required under CASL, and you may withdraw that consent at any time.

You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. Withdrawing consent may affect our ability to continue providing you with certain insurance products or services. To withdraw consent, please contact our Privacy Officer at the address above.

4. Limiting Collection

The Personal Information we collect will be limited to the details necessary for the purposes we have identified. With your consent, we may collect Personal Information from you in person at our Fleetwood location, over the telephone, or by mail, fax, email, text message, or via our website.

We may also collect Personal Information from third parties where you have authorized us to do so — for example, from your previous broker when transferring a policy, from insurers during the underwriting process, or from claims-history and credit-reporting databases (including CGI/HITS and equivalent industry databases) where relevant to underwriting and claims history.

5. Limiting Use, Disclosure, and Retention

Personal Information may only be used or disclosed for the purpose for which it was collected, unless you have otherwise consented or as required or permitted by law.

In the course of providing insurance services, we may disclose your Personal Information to:

• Insurance carriers and underwriters for the purpose of obtaining quotes, binding coverage, and maintaining your policies.
• The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) for Autoplan transactions and claims.
• Claims adjusters, appraisers, investigators, and legal counsel in connection with claims.
• Managing general agents (MGAs) and reinsurers necessary to service your insurance contracts.
• Regulatory bodies, including the Insurance Council of British Columbia, where required.
• Law enforcement or other parties, where required by law, court order, or subpoena.

We will not sell, trade, or rent your Personal Information, and we will not disclose your Personal Information to third parties for marketing purposes without your express consent.

Personal Information will only be retained for the period of time required to fulfill the purpose for which we collected it or as required by applicable law and insurance regulations. Client files are typically retained for a minimum of seven years following the end of our client relationship, consistent with Insurance Council of BC recordkeeping requirements and applicable limitation periods.

6. Accuracy

Personal Information will be maintained in as accurate, complete, and up-to-date a form as is necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it is used. We encourage you to notify us promptly of any changes to your contact information, driver’s licence, vehicles, property, or other details relevant to your coverage.

7. Safeguarding Personal Information

Personal Information is protected by security safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, including:

• Physical safeguards: locked offices, restricted-access filing, and secure document destruction.
• Organizational safeguards: staff training on privacy obligations, confidentiality agreements signed by all licensed advisors, and access that is role-based and limited to advisors and staff who require it to carry out their duties.
• Technological safeguards: password-protected systems, multi-factor authentication on staff accounts, TLS encryption for website traffic and for email in transit where supported by the sending and receiving mail systems, secure cloud storage with industry-leading providers, and regular security updates.

We take all reasonable precautions to protect your Personal Information from loss, theft, or unauthorized use, access, modification, or disclosure.

Data Breach Notification

In the event of a privacy breach involving a real risk of significant harm, Prime Insurance will take reasonable steps to contain the breach, assess the risk, notify affected individuals where appropriate, and report to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia or other regulators where required or recommended by applicable law and guidance. We maintain a breach response procedure and a record of privacy breaches in accordance with statutory requirements.

8. Openness

We make information available to you regarding our policies and practices for the management of your Personal Information. This privacy policy is published on our website at primeinsurance.ca and may be requested from our office at any time.

9. Individual Access

Upon request, you will be informed of the existence, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information, and will be given access to it. You may verify the accuracy and completeness of your Personal Information and may request that it be amended if appropriate.

However, in certain circumstances permitted by law, we may not disclose certain information to you. For example, we may not disclose information that refers to other individuals, or information subject to legal, security, or commercial proprietary restrictions.

To request access to your Personal Information, please contact our Privacy Officer at [email protected]. We will respond to your request within 30 days, consistent with PIPEDA and BC PIPA requirements.

10. Challenging Compliance

You may direct any questions, concerns, or complaints regarding our privacy policy or our handling of your Personal Information to our Privacy Officer. We will acknowledge and investigate complaints promptly, normally responding within 30 days.

If we cannot resolve your concern to your satisfaction, you may contact:

• Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia — oipc.bc.ca
• Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — priv.gc.ca

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Additional Information

Web Form Submissions

When you submit a contact form, quote request, callback request, claim, or certificate-of-insurance request on primeinsurance.ca, the information you provide is transmitted securely to us over encrypted (TLS) connections. Depending on the form, this may include your name, telephone number, email address, policy or claim details, the address where a loss occurred, and any photos or documents you choose to upload. Form submissions are stored in our business management system and reviewed by authorized Prime Insurance licensed advisors. We may also receive an automated email notification (delivered through Microsoft 365 with secure SMTP authentication) and/or a text-message notification (delivered through Twilio Inc.) to alert our staff that your request has been received.

Files and photos you upload through our website are transmitted via TLS to our website host (WP Engine, located in the United States), then downloaded into our Canadian broker management system for handling. They are retained on the website host only as long as necessary for that purpose, consistent with the retention practices described above.

Claims information and uploaded photos may include sensitive Personal Information. Please submit only the information and images relevant to your inquiry or claim. If your matter is urgent or highly sensitive, please call us at (604) 582-0557 instead of using the form. We do not intentionally collect full payment card numbers through website forms.

By submitting a form on our website, you consent to Prime Insurance contacting you by telephone, email, or text message about your inquiry.

Save A Trip — Autoplan Renewal Reminder Service

If you sign up for our free Save A Trip renewal reminder service, we collect your name, email address, and the licence plate numbers and Autoplan expiry dates you enter — nothing else. This information is used solely to send you renewal reminder emails before each expiry date you provided, and to notify our office that a signup occurred.

Reminder data is stored with Cloudflare, Inc. (a content-delivery and edge-computing provider with data centres in the United States and worldwide), and reminder emails are delivered through Resend (a U.S.-based email delivery service). Your information is not used for any other mailing list, is never sold or shared for marketing, and is deleted immediately when you unsubscribe. Every reminder email contains a one-click unsubscribe link; resubmitting the signup form with the same email address replaces your previously stored entry.

SMS / Text Messaging Communications

Where you provide your mobile telephone number to us through our website, by telephone, or in person — including by submitting any web form on primeinsurance.ca — you consent to receive text messages (SMS) from Prime Insurance about your quote request, policy, renewal, payment, claim, or service inquiry. These are service (transactional) messages. Any marketing or promotional text messages require the separate consent described in Section 3, and you can stop them at any time. Message frequency varies with your inquiry and policy activity; for website form submissions, this is typically one confirmation message per request, plus any messages needed to handle that request.

These messages are transmitted through Twilio Inc., a third-party telecommunications platform headquartered in the United States. Your mobile carrier’s standard message and data rates may apply.

Mobile information non-disclosure: Mobile phone numbers and the consent you provide for text-message contact are not sold, rented, transferred, or shared with any third party for marketing purposes. This information is used solely to communicate with you about your inquiry, policy, or claim, and to permit our authorized staff to receive internal notifications when you contact us through our website. No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.

Opting out: You may opt out of receiving non-essential text messages at any time by replying STOP to any text message we send you, or by contacting our office at (604) 582-0557 or [email protected]. Opting out of text messages will not affect transactional or essential service communications required to administer your policy. Reply HELP to any text message for assistance.

Recorded Telephone Calls and Voicemail

At present, Prime Insurance does not record incoming or outgoing telephone calls, and we do not operate a voicemail or automated answering service. Calls placed to our office during business hours are answered directly by a licensed advisor.

We are in the process of implementing a telephone answering service, which may include voicemail and, in the future, may include call recording for training and quality-assurance purposes. When call recording is implemented, you will be notified at the start of any recorded call and given the opportunity to decline. Any recorded calls will be retained only for the period necessary for the stated purpose and will be subject to the same safeguards as other Personal Information held by Prime Insurance.

Email Security

Prime Insurance uses Microsoft 365 with TLS encryption to protect email in transit where supported by the sending and receiving mail systems. However, standard email sent over the public internet is not guaranteed to be encrypted end-to-end and may be intercepted by other parties while in transit between systems.

You should not email us information that you consider highly confidential or sensitive — including driver’s licence numbers, Social Insurance Numbers, payment card information, or detailed claims details. Please call us at (604) 582-0557 or visit our office in person for any communication involving sensitive Personal Information.

When you do send us electronic mail through our website or to our email addresses, your message is stored as business correspondence in Microsoft 365 and is accessible only to authorized Prime Insurance staff.

International Data Transfers

Prime Insurance uses third-party service providers to support our operations, some of whom are located outside of Canada. Where your Personal Information is processed or stored by these providers, it may be subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which the provider operates, including lawful access requests by foreign courts and authorities.

Our principal third-party processors include:

• Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft 365) — email, file storage, and authentication. Your data may be stored or processed in Canada, the United States, or other jurisdictions used by the provider.
• Twilio Inc. — SMS and voice notifications (United States)
• WP Engine, Inc. — website hosting (United States)
• Applied Systems Inc. (Applied Epic) — broker management system (Canada)
• Compulife Software Inc. — life insurance quoting tool (Canada)
• Google LLC (Google Analytics and Google Business Profile) — website analytics and business listing (United States)

We require all third-party providers to maintain appropriate safeguards consistent with PIPEDA and BC PIPA.

Website Cookies and Analytics

Our website uses cookies — small files stored on your device when you visit primeinsurance.ca — to support core website functionality and to help us understand how visitors use our site. Most web browsers are configured to accept cookies automatically; you may change your browser settings to decline cookies or to be notified when a cookie is being set. Disabling cookies may affect website functionality.

We use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to collect aggregate, non-identifying information about visitor behaviour on our website, including IP address (anonymized), device type, browser, referring source, and the pages you visit. This information is used in aggregate to improve our website and is not used to identify you personally.

You may opt out of Google Analytics tracking at any time by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Children’s Privacy

Our website and services are intended for individuals 19 years of age or older (the age of majority in British Columbia). We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from individuals under 19 years of age. If you believe we have inadvertently collected such information, please contact our Privacy Officer and we will take steps to delete it.

Links to Other Websites

Our website may contain links to third-party sites that are not governed by this privacy policy. Although we endeavour to only link to sites with reasonable privacy standards, our privacy policy no longer applies once you leave primeinsurance.ca. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third-party websites and we recommend you review the privacy statements of those sites.

Your Rights Under PIPEDA and BC PIPA

You have the right to:

• Access the Personal Information we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information
• Withdraw consent for collection, use, or disclosure (subject to legal and contractual limits)
• Be informed of the existence, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information
• File a complaint with our Privacy Officer or the applicable Privacy Commissioner

To exercise any of these rights, contact our Privacy Officer at [email protected].

Changes to This Privacy Policy

Prime Insurance may update this privacy policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or in applicable law. The effective date at the top of this policy indicates when it was most recently updated. We encourage you to review this policy periodically. Material changes will be brought to your attention through a notice on our website.

Prime Insurance Centre Ltd. is a licensed insurance brokerage in British Columbia and a member of the Insurance Brokers Association of British Columbia (IBABC) and the Surrey & White Rock Board of Trade (SWRBOT). Basic ICBC Autoplan premiums are set by ICBC and are the same at every licensed broker in BC.